ASHPC25 review

27. Mai 2025

AI, MUSICA and Diversity – Highlights from the Austrian-Slovenian HPC Meeting 2025 (ASHPC25)

19 – 22 May 2025
Rimske Therme, Slovenia

When more than 140 HPC experts gather for four days in spring at a hotel east of Hungary, it can only be for a very special event – the Austrian–Slovenian HPC Meeting (ASHPC). This year, supercomputing professionals from ten countries came together in Slovenia to share knowledge and get new insights. There was no shortage of opportunities to do so: from 19 – 22 May, the event featured five keynotes, 47 talks, a poster session, a VSC user meeting, and two round tables.

One of the main topics this year was the launch of 13 AI Factories, which are generating considerable attention. Markus Stöhr, project lead at EuroCC Austria, introduced the newly established AI:AT: Austria’s AI Factory led by Advanced Computing Austria (ACA) and Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) with other partners. The hub is expected to launch in July and will offer a range of services to help start-ups and SMEs get their AI models up and running.

Other major and widely discussed topics included HPC applications in climate research, quantum computing, Austria’s new supercomputer MUSICA (Multi-site Computer Austria), and core technical areas such as CUDA, benchmarking and container architecture.

Round table on Women in HPC (WHPC)

A dedicated round table explored the topic of diversity and the role of women in high-performance computing (HPC). Women remain underrepresented in the field – one reason why, exactly one year ago at ASHPC24, four women came together to found the Central European Chapter for Women in HPC (WHPC) zu gründen. The initiative WHPC offers mentoring for early-career HPC professionals and aims to raise awareness of the benefits of diversity. Greater inclusion means better research – and better HPC applications that benefit everyone.

Feedback on ASHPC25

We asked our colleagues about their personal impressions and highlights from ASHPC25 – and were thrilled by the responses:

Simeon Harrison, Trainer at EuroCC Austria
„ASHPC25 was a fantastic opportunity to engage with leading international experts in supercomputing, AI and big data. I was especially impressed by Dan Alistarh’s talk on Compressing AI Models at GPT Scale. His team’s groundbreaking work shows that models with hundreds of billions of parameters can now run on a single GPU. Using algorithmic compression techniques, most deep learning models can be reduced by at least an order of magnitude – with only minimal loss of accuracy. Even more exciting is their current research on training models directly in quantised formats – an approach that could significantly reduce the time required to build these powerful yet resource-intensive systems. I’ll definitely be following Dan’s work closely, as it’s redefining what’s possible in terms of efficiency in AI models.“

Malgorzata Goiser, Bioinformatics Expert at EuroCC Austria
"ASHPC25 took place this year in a thermal spa region of Slovenia – a beautiful area with stunning views, great food, and plenty of space for relaxing and networking. It was once again exceptionally well attended and featured a diverse range of topics. There were notably more contributions from the AI sector than in previous years, including a full session block on AI Factories and HPC, with a panel discussion that addressed key questions around setup and operations."